In college, I really started to binge. I didn’t have as much structure in my life, so I would stay up late gaming and skip classes.

Early in the first semester of my junior year, my grandmother died. I fell into a depression that made me play games constantly—50 to 60 hours a week—using it as my way to cope. I had never learned actual coping skills to handle stress in real life.

Like when I was in college, I had the mindset that nobody would know if all I did that day was game.

I would wake up in the morning and get on the computer, telling myself I’d just play one game and then go to work. Next thing I knew, it’d be 3:00 in the afternoon, and I still hadn’t showered or gotten ready for the day.

I’d convince myself I didn’t need to go to the office at that point.

That would happen almost every day. An addict friend of mine likened it to being blackout drunk; you don’t have any memory of that behavior until after the fact.

I moved to rural Washington to enter a rehab facility called ReSTART Life. I stayed for about 48 days, starting in October 2015.

There were a range of technology addicts there—most people were video game addicts, but there were pornography addicts, chat room addicts, social media addicts, and even Internet addicts who can’t get enough of browsing the web.

We spent most of our days trying to build a healthy routine, including waking up and going to sleep on time, exercising, cooking our meals, cleaning, as well as attending group therapy and support meetings.

A lot of our time was focused on creating a life balance plan—a plan for handling technology when you leave the treatment facility—because ReSTART realizes that living without technology today is impossible.

Every Tuesday, I meet with my sponsor and my therapist. Between those appointments, I’ll usually hang out with other people in recovery. I used to attend multiple recovery groups and at least one 12-step meeting, too.

That’s why I call Tuesdays “recovery days.” When I got my job at Costco, I told them I needed Tuesdays off.

My boss gave me a weird look, but I told him I’m a recovering addict and I can’t work because I meet with my sponsor those days.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how supportive most people are. Some people ask, “Video games? Why can’t you just stop?!” But most people are willing to accept that if I consider it a problem, it is.

And that’s an important thing to understand about technology addiction: Just because a behavior is common and everyone does it, like playing video games or living completely attached to our computers or phones, it doesn’t mean it’s good for us.

I worry about young people who would love to make a career out of playing video games.

Video games themselves aren’t necessarily evil, but there has to be balance. Play sports, hang out with friends, have a social life.
If you want to play video games every now and then in addition to those other activities, that’s totally fine.

I’m happy to be where I am today. I’m back on my meds, and I haven’t gamed in just shy of a year. My life has gotten substantially better.

I’m happy to share my story to hopefully help others avoid the path I went down.

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